Five Mother-Son Relationships Crazier Than We Need To Talk About Kevin

We Need To Talk About Kevin, a thriller centered on the messed-up relationship between a reluctant mother and her son with sociopathic tendencies, opens in theaters Friday. In it, critics say, the ever-freaky Tilda Swinton offers one of her most unsettling performances ever. And judging from the trailer, Ezra Miller, who plays her son, has murder eyes for the whole movie. We're pretty sure the very existence of this film will have birth rates dropping at least a point or two over the next year.

Still, though Swinton and Miller are the newest messed-up mother-son pair on screen, they're far from the only ones. In fact, compared to some of their predecessors in movies and tv, they're even a little tame. Read on for more not-so-happy family dynamics.

Norman and Mrs. BatesNorman Bates: the original mama's boy. The trouble in Hitchcock's Psycho is exactly the opposite of that in We Need To Talk About Kevin; in Psycho, the son loves mommie dearest way too much, not too little. A few shower stabbings, some cross-dressing and a freaky basement reveal later, and the mothers of the world have been uncomfortable ever since.

In We Need To Talk About Kevin, Miller shoots up a school. But in American Horror Story, Tate (played by Evan Peters) shoots up a school, gets gunned down by police in his bedroom afterwards, and spends the foreseeable future stalking around his old house as a ghost, waving at his mother Constance from the window where it all went down. And Constance seems to genuinely enjoy the attention. Needy moms, are we right?

Kevin and Kate McAllisterLook, we don't care if you're in a screwball comedy directed by the genius John Hughes. If you're a mother, you don't forget your kid when you go on vacation. You certainly don't do it again, and then one more time too. It is not an option. Is Home Alone one of the best Christmas movies ever? Of course. But that doesn't mean it's not messed up.

Marty McFly and Lorraine BainesThey say every guy's looking for a gal like his mama, but this is ... extreme. Speaking of which....

Ciara LaVelle is New Times' arts and culture editor. She earned her BS in journalism at Boston University, moved to Florida in 2004, and landed a job as a travel writer. For reasons that seemed sound at the time, she gave up her life of professional island-hopping to join New Times' staff in 2011. She left the paper in 2014 to start a family, but two years and two babies later, she returned in the hopes that someone on staff would agree to babysit. No takers yet.